


Sebastian's Big Day

by DancerInTheMoonlight



Series: Alternate Seblaine [12]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Autumn, Cats, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Familiars, Fluff, Halloween, M/M, Potions, Protective Santana Lopez, Quinn Fabray & Santana Lopez Friendship, Quinn Fabray & Sebastian Smythe Friendship, Santana Lopez & Brittany S. Pierce Friendship, Santana Lopez & Sebastian Smythe Friendship, Sibling Love, Sibling Rivalry, Small Towns, The Unholy Trinity (Glee), Warlocks, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancerInTheMoonlight/pseuds/DancerInTheMoonlight
Summary: "A lady singing while cooking will marry a widower", Sebastian's great grandmother used to say. Sebastian didn’t know if she was speaking from experience. He also never asked what happened to gentlemen who sang while cooking.He did it all the time.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Sebastian Smythe, Kurt Hummel & Sebastian Smythe, Santana Lopez & Sebastian Smythe
Series: Alternate Seblaine [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926862
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

_A lady singing while cooking will marry a widower_ , Sebastian's great grandmother used to say. Sebastian didn’t know if she was speaking from experience. He also never asked what happened to gentlemen who sang while cooking. He did it all the time.

He was doing it right now.

A loud _mrrraow_ sounded on his left where his cat jumped on the countertop to get Sebastian’s attention.

“Hmm, what do you think, Perseus?” Sebastian asked the cat, dancing a little while stirring the steadily boiling pot, wrapped up in the gravelly smooth voice of Louis Armstrong and his impeccable trumpet solos.

Perseus peered into the mortar and jerked his head away in disgust.

“Not a potion to build a dream on, then?” Sebastian chuckled. “God thing I’m not presenting it to you. . . _When I’m alone with my fancies_ . . .” he sang softly, focusing on his clockwise stirs as he added the creamy-looking paste from the mortar into the boiling water. The concoction turned bright yellow. Sebastian was pleased. The cat graced him with a feline snort. Ever the believer.

Still, Sebastian could understand where the scepticism was coming from. Cooking a love potion for presentation at their town’s annual W&W fair (masqueraded as their annual Harvest Festival, since most of the town remained in the dark about the 1/3 of their fellow townsfolk practicing witchcraft and sorcery) to get an apprenticeship was no small feat. People worked their asses off every cycle just to get their stuff out there in the first place, and once it was finally there for others to professionally assess, you could _still_ end up going home for the rotten luck of being overlooked by master practitioners. True, there was only one kid in the last 50 years that actually went home for two cycles in a row. But Sebastian did not want to be another one remembered by that. He wanted to be remembered as one of the best potion makers this little town had ever seen.

Potions took ambition, creativity and precision, and Sebastian believed he had all of those. And what he, admittedly, lacked just a little on the patience front, he made up in his resourceful wit. And so, Sebastian was determined to be the best witches’ apprentice the town had ever seen and move on to bigger locations ASAP.

He had a pretty good life here but he felt it was time for something bigger, felt the gnawing need to go somewhere where witches and warlocks were truly appreciated and where he did not have to hide who he was the staggering majority of time.

Descended from a long line of Smythe witches, Sebastian was the first in line to be a guy with magic, as far as he could tell. It was a controversy in itself, a male heir to the Smythe magic, even though his father’s side (Travers, or _Travieso_ , as they were originally called) had been pretty liberal with magical lineage, and his mother _married_ him, so.

His mother’s mother wasn’t too pleased when she discovered her daughter’s firstborn had been a son. But he was determined to prove he’d been worth it. Not something people should be proving at all, he personally thought, but that was life and others for you.

His sisters didn’t fare much better. _Bad luck comes in threes_ , the saying went. Both his great grandmother _and_ her daughter had been wary when, after Cristiana, and then Elina, Teresa was born, seeing as it was three girls in a row now, much the same as when the Smythe matriarchs discovered their next-in-line was a boy. Thankfully they appeased the spirits and whatnots with copious amounts of sage and holy water at their christening. It didn’t help that their mother plain refused to bear any more children, male or female.

Sebastian considered himself unbelievably lucky with his three sisters. And he loved Teresa like no one else, she was like his wicked, sharp-tongued, bi-racial Latina twin. The saying didn’t know shit.

“Meow,” said the cat, with an inflection of a long-suffering resident.

“I know, _gatito_ ,” Sebastian murmured. He threw in a pinch of fine-powdered herb. “There. Let’s get some food.” He left the brew to simmer. He checked the clock. He had another four hours before presentation time. Plenty of time for the potion to simmer for a while and cool down.

“By Morgan! I haven’t decided what to wear.”

He’d been so wrapped up in this potion, it hadn’t even occurred to him to think about that. But since that, too, was a part of the presentation, it was important. Perseus just twitched his pointy ears, looking at him expectantly until Sebastian presented him with some food.

“Easy for you to say. You only have the _one_ outfit,” he gestured at the sleek black fur. “Which is _purr_ fect, of course.” He grinned at his own pun. He was used to solitude by now.

Sebastian owned a nice little cottage (family heirloom) at the far end of the town, edging towards the wilderness, just like he preferred it. His sisters lived closer to the centre and Sebastian didn’t envy them – far too much surveillance and curious eyes. In fact, whenever he visited, he felt compelled to add to their busybody-repellent charms. He was great at those. His own house was completely fool proof.

Except when it came to his youngest sister.

“You’re not punning with yourself _again_ , are you? That’s super lame,” Teresa had soundlessly let herself in, like she owned the place, and was now standing in his kitchen. Perseus didn’t even look up from his food.

“ _¿Qué haces aquí, Tere?_ ”

“Checking up on my big brother on his big day. _Y tú_ , twink, _¿qué estás haciendo?_ ” Teresa peered under the lid at the simmering potion before he could stop her.

“I’m cooking.” She scrunched her face.

“What did you put in that? Yellow brick?”

“ _No_.” He put the lid back in place and steered her away. “It’s a secret, and I’m not telling.”

“ _Bien, entonces, ¿qué te vas a poner?_ ”

“I don’t know yet,” Sebastian sighed. “I haven’t really thought about it. I was going to let Perseus decide. And by decide I mean walk all over whatever I laid out on the bed,” he admitted.

Teresa smiled a slow smile. He knew why she was here.

“Fine, you have precisely forty minutes to make me ‘presentable’. No more. I have to get back to my potion after that.” He gave her a serious look. “I can’t screw this up, Teresa.”

“Say no more, twink.” 

_Oh, Morgan._


	2. Chapter 2

To be fair, Teresa actually put in an effort to make him look nice and also feel comfortable. And managed to do it all in under 30 minutes. Sebastian was a little impressed.

When Sebastian returned to his brew, dressed in a fine copper silk shirt (which he was pretty sure he’d never even seen in his closet before), adorned with tastefully subdued scroll patterns, spiral shapes and curves that resembled little pumpkin-vine palmettes crawling all over his arms and torso, and some reasonable slacks casual enough to go with his converse, the potion was bordering on orange. That was a good sign – he needed it to be orange in order to be digestible, however, he didn’t want it _too_ orange, because that kind of thing took longer to wear off.

He turned off the stove and removed the lid to let it cool for a while before he could pour some into a special glass bottle.

“Smells like pumpkins in here,” Teresa made a face re-entering the kitchen.

“That’s what I was going for,” Sebastian shrugged. “Officially, I’m selling homemade pumpkin juice. I even have some actual pumpkin juice.” He did, he snatched the recipe from his next-door neighbour, a middle-aged shopkeeper with an unprecedented lack of superstition. (And the guy sold brooms for a living.)

“Well, I’d buy whatever you were selling, looking like _that_ , La Voisin,” his sister smirked, giving him a once-over. Her gaze came to rest on his head and she scrunched her nose. “Only do something about the hair.”

He ignored her as he went about. Sebastian’s perfect coiffure was his usual look, even though Teresa said the ‘wannabe Disney prince haircut’ made him look like a jerk. Sebastian couldn’t care less, it was the way he looked, and besides, he wasn’t going there to impress anyone with his looks but with his _work_.

He donned his expensive waterproof trench coat – “ _Heil_ -lo,” Teresa commented, so he flipped her off and left Perseus in her care. (Not his brightest idea, when he thought better of it.)

Outside it was a windy and luminous October day. The sky was as blue as if a cerulean atmospheric ocean had been turned upside down to stretch over their heads. The grass was a deep green under the Indian sun, the orange and white and magenta geraniums swayed in the oncoming breeze. Crimson maple leaves painted a stark contrast against the bright canvas of the sky. In the end, Sebastian arrived early to claim his spot at one of the wooden stalls under all that sun-kissed, clear blue.

October was by far Sebastian’s favourite month of the year, especially because of the prefect combination of wet, crisp and sunny days. He enjoyed how everything glistened in the rain and then became encased in magical yellow and orange hues under the right circumstances. Even the occasional autumn fog couldn’t dim the vivid colours of October, seeping through, intense and clear. And if there was anything Sebastian liked, it was clarity. 

His perfect potion gleamed in the sun. He couldn’t wait for it to be tested.

Sebastian had put extra care to secure the stall with non-magic folk repellent charms, so that it might attract the majority of people who would actually come and offer him an apprenticeship. It wasn’t cheating, _per se_. Sebastian was just determined that nothing was going to ruin his big day.

The sound of someone settling into the stall to his right made him look up from his carefully arranged glass bottles and decorative pumpkins. Sebastian sensed no repellents on the stall next to him. The guy must be a non-practitioner, then.

He was dressed in a lavish green overcoat with maroon leaves embroidered all over it and a pristine white shirt, an actual frill cascading down its front. The outfit was ridiculous, but what was even more ridiculous was how good it looked on him. Brocade and frills should really not look that good on anyone.

“Hi,” the guy caught him staring and apparently decided to make small talk. He gave Sebastian a little wave. “First time here,” the guy gestured around the stall with a nervous smile. “You?”

“Same,” Sebastian replied curtly. He wasn’t really interested in chatting with the guy when he needed to be focused on his potential customers.

“Nice coat,” the guy spoke again, nodding at Sebastian’s Hugo Boss trench coat. Well, _duh_.

“Uh, thanks,” he replied, re-arranging his bottles. “You too . . . I guess?” He didn’t want to be completely ruthless to the guy who, obviously, wasn’t even competition and could, in fact, recognize a designer coat. The guy chuckled.

“I’m Kurt.”

“Good to know,” Sebastian replied. He knew he was being dismissive. But he needed to focus, not chat, dammit. Luckily, Kurt’s (no doubt, miffed) reaction to this was overshadowed by the arrival of Sebastian’s three favourite people in the world. Teresa was carrying Perseus in what looked like a very small new-born baby carrier strapped around her front, with only his head sticking out. He looked somewhere between mildly bored and incredibly pissed. (Teresa just might be cursed by the end of the day, Sebastian figured.)

“If it isn’t the unholy trinity,” Sebastian said in lieu of a greeting. “And cat,” he gave Teresa, who rolled her eyes, a pointed look. His other sister, Cristiana, frowned at him.

“Don’t say that word,” she said. 

“Cat?” Sebastian asked, confused.

“Trinity.”

Ever under the pressure if being the second-born first-born girl, Cristiana had been drilled into superstition. The connection of bad luck and threes was just one of those things.

“Fine, I won’t,” he conceded. (Even though they both knew he probably would.)

“Oh hi, Kurt!” Elina, the middle child among Sebastian’s three younger siblings, enthusiastically greeted the young man in the next stall. He nodded back with a polite smile.

“You know this guy?” Sebastian addressed what seemed to be the more pressing topic at hand than calling his sisters the ‘unholy trinity’.

“Elina used to date him,” Teresa said with a weird look on her face.

“It was a phase,” the middle sister shrugged.

“Yeah, he was less into fashion then,” Teresa replied in a dry tone which made her brother proud (and also a little intimidated by how much she just sounded like himself).

“I can hear you, you know,” the guy, Kurt, drawled from his stall.

“What are you doing here Kurt?” Elina asked, ever the curious one.

“Presenting my potion,” Kurt answered her with a genuine smile. Sebastian’s head whipped to the side. The stall table was empty. And this guy was a practitioner?

“Wha—How—Where’s your sample?” he stammered. Kurt turned the sweet smile to Sebastian but it no longer reached his eyes.

“Oh, that. I’m making it here. From scratch.”

Sebastian gaped. Even Cristiana looked impressed.

So that explained why Sebastian sensed no charms on his stall—Kurt needed to hone in on all of his magic if he was going to just brew something less than simple on the spot.

This was a serious game-changer. Of course, there had never been any rule on when and where, just that the potion shouldn’t be more than 24 hours old. So that excluded all more complex ones which had to sit for a few weeks before they were ready to use.

In fact, there weren’t all that many potions which one could brew within a 24 hour period, unless they were insanely prepared. And by that Sebastian meant crazy stocked with pre-processed ingredients and the ability to continually channel their magic in a steady, uninterrupted flow. That kind of performance took skill and practice and, well, rest. And in a world where it seemed that there was time for everything but rest, it was not something you witnessed every day. It was rare.

But so was dedication, and Sebastian was nothing if not dedicated. Well, then.

The guy, Kurt, started pulling out his ingredients and tools. He pulled out a huge silver blade and started cutting up some blueish mushroom. Sebastian cleared his throat.

“And what will you be making, if I may ask?”

“Yes, you may, and it’s none of your business.” Sebastian opened his mouth to press on but the guy spoke again. “I will tell you, however, if that’ll make you shut up. It’s a sleeping draught, but with a twist.” Sebastian barely stopped himself from scoffing. A sleeping potion was really not the showstopper he’d been expecting. “And before you ask what, I’m not telling. It’s a trade secret. . . But let’s just say I grow my own herbs.”

This time Sebastian really did scoff. Everyone grew their own herbs, nowadays. Cristiana gave him a maternal look, _be nice_ , it said. Teresa looked amused. Elina had long drifted to Morgan knows where at that point.

“Entertaining as this is, gentlemen, we shall leave you to it,” Teresa winked at her brother, dragging the other two by their elbows. “We have the rest of the fair to check out. Good luck, Sebastian!”

Perseus looked like he’d rather be suffering through a sleeping draught bubble bath than checking out the rest of the fair. Sebastian empathized.

“So, Sebastian, huh? I didn’t know Elina was your sister.”

“I didn’t know you were into women,” Sebastian smirked. He so enjoyed winding competition up.

“Oh, what is your problem? I’m trying to be polite here.”

Yeah, no can do.

“My _problem_ is that you’re standing next to me in that hideous outfit, distracting everyone in a hundred mile radius.”

Kurt scoffed, cutting the mushroom a little more forcefully.

“So it’s my outfit and _not_ the fact that I’m competition?”

“Please, like you’d ever stand a chance with a sleeping draught against this,” he haughtily gestured at his neat little bottle line-up.

“. . . Which is what, exactly? Pumpkin juice?” Kurt gave a little mock clap. “ _Bravo_.”

“ _No_ , it’s _not_ pumpkin juice, you overdressed little sh—” Sebastian didn’t get to finish that sentence because they were interrupted by someone approaching their stalls.

“Hey. Am I. . . Interrupting something?” the newcomer’s eyes fluttered uncertainly from one to another. Sebastian glanced to see it was one of the volunteering staff at the fair. He had the t-shirt and the clipboard and everything. “I could come back later.” And he looked like he really wanted to do just that.

Sebastian took a deep breath and faced him. _Polite_ , he reminded himself. _Don’t get disqualified before it even started_. “No, not at all. . .” and then he promptly trailed off because that had to have been the most compact, dapper-looking volunteer he’d ever seen. A Cary Grant hair-do and a button-up under a neon yellow t-shirt with a huge ‘W&W Harvest Festival’ printed on it should not look good, on anyone, ever.

“Good,” the guy brightened. “I’m Blaine, I’m here to see that you’re properly settled. So that’s uh. . . Hummel? Kurt?” he pointed one finger to his left (Kurt Hummel nodded), glancing at his clipboard and then swung the same hand to point to the right. “And Sebastian. . . Smythe?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry, it said ‘Travers’ on the form, must’ve gotten mixed up.”

“Yeah, must have.” Sebastian cursed himself for not paying better attention to stupid forms. That’s exactly the stuff he needed to watch out for when dealing with non-practitioners, like this Blaine. He couldn’t risk drawing attention to his magical background. But he also just _knew_ that his father’s surname wouldn’t capture the attention his potion-work deserved. And Sebastian desperately wanted to capture the right attention.

Blaine the Volunteer checked their presence on his clipboard.

“Oh-kay! That’s settled, you’re settled – if you need anything, just shout, all right?” His smile was the biggest Sebastian had ever seen on a person. Must be the volunteer thing. They grunted their consent and Blaine left in the direction he came from, presumably to check on other participants. Sebastian tried very hard not to double take after some of his more _prominent_ assets of his retreating form, and failed.

“Your eyes might fall out if you stare any harder.” Hummel commented dryly, like he himself wasn’t looking.

“Don’t you have a potion to brew?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

It was silent after that. Sebastian put his best-selling face on. Time to win this thing.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, how’s it going?” 

Sebastian looked up from his phone to find a pair of amber eyes staring at him closely. The sudden proximity made him jump, though only a little. 

“Great,” he replied. 

To be fair, it was a little slow. Kurt Hummel got no opportunity to show his mixing skills to anyone just yet and Sebastian had so far attracted a dozen of people who were interested in his actual pumpkin juice, despite the repellent charms. Sebastian couldn’t believe he sold so much pumpkin juice. He didn’t even _like_ pumpkin juice. He guessed he could always buy something nice with the earnings. A new broom, perhaps. (His old one never quite worked as it should have done. Cristiana said it was because he bought it in May. She was a superstitious hag.)

“Hey, are you ok?” 

“Huh?” Sebastian blinked. Oh, right, Blaine the Volunteer Anderson was standing in front of his stall. 

“You looked like you drifted off. . . I—sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you. You probably have customers and stuff.” Blaine Anderson started to retreat. 

“No!” Sebastian hastened to stop him. He could hear a snort from the other stall, even though Hummel was preoccupied with a boiling pot. (Sebastian had yet to see him do anything, but then, anyone of interest had yet to approach either of them. He bet Hummel came up with a charm to keep the pot magically boiling until he needed to make a show of preparation. It was clever, although too flashy for Sebastian’s taste. Meanwhile, Hummel actually sold mushrooms, of all things. Perhaps Sebastian should buy some as an experiment.)

“No?” Blaine Anderson sounded hopeful. 

“No, I mean—stay,” Sebastian smiled a (hopefully) reassuring smile. It wasn’t something he usually did, smile at people, especially not to reassure pretty strangers and _especially_ not while he was trying to win against competition. “Sorry, I have a lot on my mind right now.” 

“It’s ok, I was just passing by. The sale seems to be going well?” Blaine observed. 

“Yeah, actually.” 

Blaine couldn’t know Sebastian wasn’t worried about selling the pumpkin juice. He was worried about not making it into apprenticeship and blowing his chances with none other than Mistress Washington. Of course, being a non-practitioner, Blaine the Volunteer had no idea who that was. Or what Sebastian did with his life in general. 

Roz Washington was one of the best potion makers Sebastian had ever heard of. He’d been obsessed with her for as long as he could remember. Even though she was one of the initiators, Sebastian had no idea how they got her to personally attend this year’s W&W Fair and he almost fainted when his sisters came around his stall again telling him they glimpsed her at the other end of the lot. 

Ultimately, Sebastian suspected that he would probably die happy if she so much as passed by and glanced at his pumpkin juice for a second, let alone examined his love potion. Although he _really_ wanted her to examine it because he really wanted an apprenticeship.

“I love pumpkin juice.” Blaine seemed to really mean it. 

“Oh, have some,” Sebastian said immediately. It was not like him at all. If it were, say, Hummel, he wouldn’t even think of offering.

“I couldn’t.” 

“I have plenty,” Sebastian shrugged and offered Blaine a neatly packed bottle. Blaine smiled. It seemed to be his default setting. 

“No, really – I can’t carry that around with me. I still have like, two hours until break time. I do actually do some work around here,” he smirked a little and Sebastian found he liked this new expression on his face. 

“I’ll save you one for later, then.” 

“Deal.” Blaine Anderson winked before he left. 

“How generous of you,” Kurt Hummel commented after Blaine made a brief stop at his stall as well, before disappearing into the crowd. 

“You’re just jealous he didn’t ask after one of your creepy mushrooms,” Sebastian replied and Kurt laughed. Blaine had promised to bring them coffee at the end of his shift. Either he was trying to flirt with both of them at the same time, or he took pity on them because they both looked like hell. 

*

An enormous shadow blocked what little late afternoon sun had been shining upon Sebastian’s stall. 

“Good afternoon. I heard there were some practitioners around here.” 

Sebastian looked up into the face of a tall, dark-skinned woman with a sleek, finger wave side-cut of short platinum blond hair. She was wearing a sky-blue silk dress adorned with lavish gold clutches under a heavy fur coat which seemed to have a life of its own. The tiny, multi-coloured rocks lodged in her earlobes danced under the sun. 

“— – yes!” Sebastian had a hard time remembering how to produce words. He could see Kurt Hummel turn around to stare in his peripheral vision. “I—I mean. Good afternoon, Mistress Washington.” The giant woman smiled rows of white teeth. 

“Always a pleasure to meet a fan. Now, show me. What do you have?” 

This was it, the moment he’d been waiting for. He pulled out a bottle of the love potion he brewed especially for this occasion and started explaining . . . only to be interrupted before he even got to open it. 

“Hmm. And what is that?” Mistress Washington asked, interrupting Sebastian’s animated tirade by pointing at a bottle of his pumpkin juice. The colour was almost identical to the other brew, but the juice itself had a little more transparency in its texture, and only a potion master could tell the difference without closer inspection. 

“I—that?” 

“Yes. _That_.” Mistress Washington stared at him, waiting. 

“That is . . . my, uh. Pumpkin juice,” Sebastian said, completely at a loss about where this was headed. “I—I mean, it’s not originally my recipe, I got it from my neighbour a-and improved a couple of things. . .” he spewed in a sudden surge of word vomit and trailed off, feeling his face burn because he just knew Hummel was listening in on the conversation. (Please, Sebastian would be listening as well!) And probably gloating. 

Why the hell was she interested in the stupid pumpkin juice? Sebastian was desperate to prove himself, had made a brilliant potion – and here Mistress Washington was, asking details about his _fake_ product? Oh, Hummel was going to have a field day with this, for sure. 

“Interesting,” Mistress Washington said. Suddenly she looked business. “All right, Mr.. . . ?” she looked at him expectantly. 

“S-Smythe.” 

“Mr. Smythe. I would like to take a sample.” 

“You would?” Sebastian exclaimed and promptly checked himself. “I mean, that’s great! Here,” he filled up a tiny vial with the orange brew and offered it to her. He didn’t know what he’d said right, since she interrupted him before he even got around to explaining the process, but he wasn’t about to question it and lose this opportunity. 

“Oh, not that. The other one, please.” 

“The o-other one?” 

“This one, called ‘pumpkin juice’,” Mistress Washington clarified. She was joking, right? He could glimpse Kurt Hummel’s shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Sebastian didn’t find it funny. Not at all. “Well? Mr. Smythe, I haven’t got all day.” That snapped him out of it. 

“Of—of course.” He felt stupid pouring pumpkin juice into a vial so he gave her an entire bottle of it, instead. They were already packed and sealed. As a _front_. For regular people who didn’t know first thing about magic. 

“Thank you. Have a good day.” And with that, she slid majestically to the right, her blue gown swiping the ground as she went. 

Sebastian could only stare after her. She stopped at Kurt Hummel’s stall next and he launched into _showing_ her the preparation, not telling her about it. She seemed interested. It only took a couple of minutes but she asked Kurt for a sample of his sleeping draught, as well. Well, not _as well_ because instead of asking for his potion, she had just asked Sebastian for some of his freaking pumpkin juice. 

It struck him then. He was going to lose his apprenticeship with Roz Washington to Kurt Hummel and his sleeping draught. How? How could he have let this happen? If he had been more focused. . . If he hadn’t . . . No. No point in thinking how he could have steered Blaine in Kurt’s direction or even just brush him off, now. 

He had to figure out how to fix this, while Roz Washington was still here. She was lingering in their area, just two stalls away, chatting with a small red-haired witch who Sebastian knew owned a local bookshop (mostly alternative stuff). 

_ Let’s see, if she could see what my potion does _ , Sebastian thought to himself, _then she’d take me, for sure_. He just had to demonstrate. But how? 

He looked frantically about, searching for something—something—

“Coffee! Just like I promised,” Blaine Anderson smiled his enormous smile approaching their stalls with two large paper cups to-go. “They may have cooled a bit, I had to—” Blaine was interrupted by his phone. “I have to take this,” he grimaced and being closer to Sebastian, he set the cups down on his table. “Just a sec. Hello? Uh-huh. . . ” 

Sebastian glanced at the cups. Then he glanced over at Kurt Hummel, who was clearing away most of his stupid unsold mushrooms, since it was nearing closing time. Kurt had this unrelenting, smug smirk which seemed to be plastered on his face with a permanency spell. He wasn’t looking Sebastian’s way. Blaine had a hand across his face in an obvious attempt to easier endure the persistent yammering that could be heard from the other side. 

Sebastian made a split-second decision. 

He pulled the original vial from his pocket, the one which didn’t make it into Roz Washington’s hands, and slipped a few drops of his love potion into both cups. It took only a moment of distraction. 

“. . . _yes_. Cooper, I have to go. Yes, bye.” Blaine put his phone down and sighed in relief. “Sorry about that. Annoying older brothers,” he said. Sebastian responded with an easy smile. “Here you go,” Blaine gestured towards the cups and Sebastian picked one, nodding his thanks. Blaine picked up the other one and took it over to Kurt. Showtime. 

“Here. Was it a good day?” Sebastian heard Blaine ask, ever the nice guy. 

“Yes, actually, it was.” He could hear the inflection in Kurt’s voice and silently grit his teeth. _Come on, just drink the coffee, you stupid smug bastard._ “Thank you, Blaine.” Sebastian watched from the corner of his eye. Watched Kurt bring the cup to his mouth. 

_ That’s it, almost there. Almost there, you self-entitled, obnoxious little— _

“I think someone put pumpkin spice in it,” Kurt said, scrunching his face and lowering the cup. “I really hate the smell of pumpkins.” 

Sebastian looked over to see Kurt lift the lid to check and gag at the smell. 

“Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize . . . They were so crowded and I just . . . I feel so bad right now.” Blaine the Volunteer probably did feel horribly bad about it. 

“No, no, it’s ok! Honestly, don’t worry about it, it’s the thought that counts,” Kurt waved his hand around dismissively, looking at Blaine. “Hey, I heard you say you liked pumpkin juice, earlier. Doesn’t happen to extend to pumpkin flavoured stuff in general, does it?” he extended the cup towards Blaine, who shrugged and nodded. “I’d hate for it to go to waste.” 

Kurt smiled. Blaine smiled back. 

“Sure. Thanks.” 

Sebastian watched in horror as Blaine lifted the cup to his mouth and made another split-second decision. He lunged towards them, with the sole intention of knocking the cup out of Blaine the Volunteer Anderson’s hand.

And then everything went to hell. 


	4. Chapter 4

There was a loud bang in the kitchen, followed by some cursing.

“ _Sebastian, get your ass in here, this thing is about to explode!_ ” his sister cried, sounding panicked. Cristiana rarely sounded panicked, and therefore the situation over there in the kitchen must really be pressing.

Not as pressing as over _here_ , in the bathroom, though, where Sebastian was trying to reason with a completely lovesick Blaine Anderson. Blaine’s relentless attempts to crawl all over him were alternated with his lips shifting into a ridiculous pout every time Sebastian managed to restore some distance between their bodies.

“I’M COMING!” Sebastian yelled at the top of his lungs, frustrated for repeatedly trying to wriggle out of Blaine’s embrace. “JUST TUR— _No, stop it_ ,” he hissed at the other boy, jumping in surprise when Blaine’s hands found their way to his butt and shamelessly felt him up. “—TURN IT OFF!” Sebastian settled on holding Blaine’s wrists. The other felt this to be an invitation to advance on Sebastian’s face with his lips.

“Seriously, though, _stop_ it,” Sebastian barked twisting his body impossibly in order to get away while keeping a firm grip on Blaine’s wrists.

“But I wanna kiss you,” Blaine whined pathetically. “I _love_ you.”

This man. Morgan give him strength.

Sebastian guessed he deserved what had come because of his recklessness. He wanted so desperately for Mistress Washington to notice him, yet he never took into account how his brilliant, on-the-spot plan could spectacularly backfire. And backfire, rather spectacularly, it had.

Blaine had ended up with the potion in his face. All over his face and his front, to be exact, which is why they were currently in Sebastian’s bathroom. What hadn’t ended up all over him, Blaine had already swallowed, which is why Blaine was currently trying to press their lips together and shove his tongue down Sebastian’s throat like his life depended on it. It also made cleaning Blaine up unbelievably difficult. He might just have to cuff him somewhere and wait this out.

“ _Sebastian!_ ” Cristiana called again from the kitchen. “ _It’s changing colour! What do I do?_ ”

Morgan, he had to get out there. If only he could somehow keep Blaine away from himself for the time being. At least until he finished preparing the antidote. It was a task proving to be harder and harder by the second. And that was not good, to say the least, seeing as Sebastian had been given a deadline to do it by midnight. Make the antidote and Roz Washington agreed to make him his apprentice. It wasn’t straying so far away from the original plan, when he thought about it. Only now he had another potion to brew and a guy who just wouldn’t let him _breathe_ for even a second, just because those pretty amber doe eyes happened to land on Sebastian at the exact moment Sebastian’s love potion (which had been conceived as revenge _for Hummel_ , by the way!) made its way down to his stomach. Morgan, he was a mess. _A hot one_ , his gut implied.

_Stop it_ , he thought. _Focus_.

After a mostly annoyed and slightly amused Roz Washington had decided that she’d give Sebastian a shot by letting him make a potion which she’d come by to administer herself at midnight, Sebastian had been left at the mercy of a clingy, intoxicated non-practitioner who had no idea about anything, except that he was _completely in love_ with Sebastian. This new-found devotion was proving to be very distracting. Mistress Washington had witnessed the strength of Sebastian’s brew then and there, but apparently, it hadn’t been enough. Sebastian could still hear Kurt Hummel’s cackling when she presented Sebastian with a special vial which would know whether he made the antidote himself and told him to better get going if he wanted to finish in time for the deadline. And now the cute mundane fair volunteer Blaine Anderson was acting silly all over Sebastian’s cottage, trying to get into his space and into his arms and proclaiming love and devotion left and right.

Sure, Blaine was hot, but if this was the outcome, Sebastian would never make love potions again. It was just so intense all the time. Consider the lesson learned. No more love magic for him.

“Mmmf—” the air was knocked out of him when Blaine, in a moment of distraction, managed to suddenly collide their faces and latch his lips onto Sebastian’s own. Why couldn’t he have just stopped Roz Washington and talked to her some more? Why did he have to act on stupid impulse? This wouldn’t have been happening. Or rather, it probably would have happened at some point, but not so— _ooh_ , there was tongue. . . It wasn’t until he felt his shirt being unbuttoned that Sebastian realized he’d let go of Blaine’s wrists and gripped his hips instead.

“No. Nope,” he broke their kiss and slapped Blaine’s hands away from his buttons, even though they returned once and then ultimately changed their course towards Sebastian’s zipper. He needed some backup here. “TERESA! _TERESA, ¡VEN ACA!_ ” he yelled for his other sister.

“ _What?_ ” sounded from the other side.

“Just get in here so I can get out!”

“Where are you going?” Blaine asked, confused.

“Nowhere. Teresa!”

She opened the door and her head slipped in, eyes screwed shut. “Are you two decent?”

Sebastian groaned.

“I don’t have time for this, _Tere_ , help me,” he sighed.

She opened her eyes, and raised an eyebrow when she took in the sight. She pointedly cleared her throat. “Cris is freaking out back there. And your stupid cat is no help at all.”

“How is he supposed to help? He’s a _cat_.” She just tsked annoyingly, and Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Whatever, just get in here and keep an eye on Blaine while I finish the potion.” He disentangled himself from Blaine’s arms, adjusting his pants and fixing his shirt.

“No! Don’t leave me!” Blaine cried.

“Look, here’s Teresa, she’s really nice and she’ll help you put on a clean shirt,” Sebastian slipped behind Teresa, making her a barrier between him and Blaine. “And then you can join me in the kitchen.” _And you can swallow that antidote and finally make me Roz Washington’s apprentice_ , he thought, but didn’t say. He pushed Teresa towards Blaine. She hissed at him on reflex, very catlike behaviour for a person who had just called his cat stupid, Sebastian thought. It seemed to intimidate Blaine a little when he tried to go after Sebastian as he slipped out the door. They’d be fine, Teresa could handle it. Sebastian had a potion to brew.

In the kitchen, it was chaos.

Cristiana was frantically flipping pages, alternating between several different books, desperate to find something in order to keep the potion steady while Elina was busy singing to it, probably convinced that it would help with the boiling. Perseus was all bristling fur and swishing tail, piercing eyes and twitching ears.

“Oh thank Morgan!” Cristiana said when she spotted Sebastian. “I’m going crazy over here. I tried to add the next ingredient and it just—” she opened her palms in front of her face imitating the sound of an explosion. She handed him a well-worn apron which he quickly tied around his front with experienced, dexterous fingers. Martha Stewart, Mary Berry and any old 1960s housewitch would have been proud.

“It’s probably because I have to be the one making it. I bet that Roz Washington put some kind of mojo on the deadline,” he was already turning the stove back on and checking to see the damage. The angry hissing stopped as soon as his hand was the one to stir it.

“Clever,” Cristiana observed.

“I sang to it so it wouldn’t get angry,” Elina said, patting his shoulder.

“Thanks babe,” Sebastian gave her a fleeting smile. Elina had rather no brewing skills but she was absurdly good at persuasive magic. Even though it was generally meant for living creatures. Elina had no problem thinking it might work on boiling cauldrons, however. Out of the four of them, she was undoubtedly the weirdest one. Sebastian wished he could be that level of weird. Or at least turn into a cat. Now, that would be something.

“What the hell did you put in that in the first place? Mandrake?” Cristiana inquired, peering into the pot over Sebastian’s shoulder as he reached for some jasmine leaves and liquorice root. Mandrake was the common, if volatile ingredient to all kinds of amorously inclined potions or love magic in general.

Liquorice root would help persuade Blaine Anderson’s poor, infatuated mind to let this fake love go. Jasmine was not in the original recipe. However, since Sebastian needed to dominate Blaine’s judgement he wanted to do so in the kindest and gentlest way possible. He disliked violation. True, that being the case, he shouldn’t have brewed a love potion in the first place, but it had been just so complicated and tempting and . . . Sebastian liked to show off his abilities. He didn’t need to be flashy to be a sucker for that kind of attention, any kind of praise for work splendidly done. He craved professional acclaim almost as much as he craved air to breathe. It was his worst flaw. His sisters often told him so.

“Now, now, that would be telling,” he quipped at Cristiana, who smacked him, huffing _tonto_ under her breath. Truth be told, she knew most of his original recipes by heart and was actually better at preparing some of his concoctions than he was. But he liked to make her guess and figure things out on her own. “There. I estimate we now have,” Sebastian checked his watch, “say, an hour and a half before the final step.”

It was five minutes to 10 PM. That was cutting it extremely close, what with the cooling process and all. Sebastian refused to feel anxious in any way. He had this.

“Luckily, I don’t have to stir. We just let it sit—” there were exasperated sounds coming from the bathroom. Right. He forgot about that tiny detail. What the hell was he supposed to do with Blaine the Mundane in the meantime? They couldn’t just . . . lock him in the bathroom. Or could they?

Too late for that, as the bathroom doors opened and a frantic Blaine Anderson stepped out, followed by Teresa’s cursing.

“Sebastian? Sebastian!” A look of unadulterated relief washed over his face when he spotted the one he’d been looking for. He was wearing one of Sebastian’s long sleeved t-shirts and his grin was blinding and terrifying. “I changed! You said I could join you in the kitchen!” Blaine bounded to where Sebastian and Cristiana stood by the stove. Sebastian braced himself for the assault but Blaine apparently got distracted by the stifling sweet fragrance rising from the steaming pot. Or it might have been the colour. The steeping liquorice root caused the liquid behave unlike anything Blaine had probably ever seen. Well, he’d seen it now, no sense in covering it.

“Are you cooking? I didn’t know you could,” Blaine fingered his apron amorously, as if that was yet another one of Sebastian’s stellar traits which solidified Blaine’s undying love for him. Or maybe he just wanted to take it off, like he had tried with his shirt. Sebastian just nodded. “Ooh, whacha making?”

“A magic potion,” Elina answered from where she was perched on a chair, not perturbed in the slightest by revealing this piece of information, and Sebastian had to prevent Blaine from excitedly leaning all the way into the pot and dunking his face in the process.

“Are you a wizard? Like Harry Potter?” Blaine’s face was pure glee.

“N-not really—” Sebastian stumbled over an explanation while Cristiana gasped out an amused laugh, while Elina nodded enthusiastically.

“ _Dios mío_ ,” Teresa, who had emerged from the bathroom and was watching the scene unfold from the kitchen doorway, rolled her eyes giving up the conversation completely and went to sit on the couch in the adjoining living room, pulling out a familiar deck of cards. Teresa was practically born into tarot and it was a rare talent Sebastian wished he possessed. (He was Teresa’s number one test-reader growing up.)

“And a black cat!” Blaine exclaimed, pointing a finger at Perseus who sprang up on the counter out of nowhere to see what the commotion was about. “Is this your familiar? Can it assume human form? Does it speak?” Blaine bent down to squint at Perseus, whose little feline face was painted with shock. “Hey there, little familiar,” he cooed and the cat hissed. Blaine took it as a firm sign he’d guessed right and proceeded to be delighted. Sebastian could only gape, while Cristiana full-on snickered behind her hand, a couple of blond strands falling into her face.

Talking familiars, witches turning into cats – Sebastian _wished_ that he could actually do that. It wasn’t unheard of but it was incredibly rare. More of a myth, more of an old Samhain bedtime story than anything else.

He just hoped Blaine wouldn’t go on asking stuff like if Sebastian was unable to pass through a cross (Sebastian had a huge-ass cross above his door, his mother put it there and it never went away) or the famous herbal remedies to keep witches away and escape the evil eye (please, Sebastian would keep _himself_ away from people who actually gave him the evil eye, no herbs needed).

Blaine looked around with an awed face. Surprisingly, he peeled himself from Sebastian’s side in order to wander through the kitchen, fleetingly examining jars of herbs and cookbooks and all kinds of charms and spices dangling from the shelves. Now that he knew of it, everything probably seemed like magic. To Cristiana’s amusement and Sebastian’s dismay, Blaine sniffed at stuff and touched things in passing, something you should never do in someone else’s space. That kind of energy tinting was not considered polite. But he guessed Blaine the Mundane wasn’t aware of that. Or should he call him Blaine the Muggle from now on? Sebastian scoffed as Blaine’s fingers briefly caressed a small kitchen ladder on the other side of the room, propped up against an old oak wood shelf towering above everything else in the overall crammed space. He sighed, closing his eyes for a second.

_Don’t you walk under a ladder, boy!_ used to be another one of Sebastian’s grandmother’s favourites – not that Sebastian saw how could he possibly pass under a set of ladders now that he was a little over 6 ft. tall. Some other things stuck, though. He always gave his blessings when people sneezed, but more out of habit than to stop the Devil entering their bodies. And even though he frequently opened umbrellas inside his house, he was extra careful with mirrors. And he never, ever spilt salt. Especially not while he was cooking.

Sebastian opened his eyes.

“Whoops.” Blaine Anderson appeared right beside him again, which made him jump and knock into a small container of salt, effectively spilling some across the floor. Great.

“Is that bad luck?” Blaine stage-whispered. “Are you going to be cursed because of me?” (“ _For the love of Morgan, make him shut up_ ,” Teresa’s comment could be heard from the adjacent room.)

_No_. It was bad luck Sebastian didn’t have a proper sweeper at hand. He pushed Blaine away, looking for something to clean the mess.

“Cristiana, watch the potion.” What he mean was: _watch Blaine the Mundane because I don’t trust him around it_ , and she understood perfectly.

“Hey, Blaine? Why don’t you go sit with Elina at the table?” Sebastian could hear Cristiana purr. He could only picture Teresa’s face if Cristiana had offered Blaine to join _her_ in the living room and give him a tarot reading while they’re at it. “I can make you some herbal tea if you want.”

“Is it to make me forget what I saw?”

“No,” she snorted but responded sympathetically. “It’s to warm you up and make you feel more at home while we wait.”

“Oh. Wait for what?”

Cristiana didn’t answer that one, but she didn’t have to because by then Elina was already engaging Blaine with her own curious questions about anything mundane.

There was a curious superstition – one which ran in most magical families – that it is unlucky to buy brooms in May. Something like: _brooms bought in May, sweep the family away_.

The town store proprietors always complained they never sold a single brush during the month of May. People here would consider it is as good as murder to buy one. Sebastian’s great grandmother thought it unlucky to buy a broom within the twelve days of Christmas. She bought one once and made up her mind that she would not live to see another Christmas day. However, she ended up living many a year after that grave decision, and they all had to hear her complaining about it constantly.

Finally, Sebastian found an old sweeper. It was set in a dark corner by the front door. _If in a corner you set your broom, strangers are bound to arrive, and soon_. Fitting. Sebastian’s broom wasn’t set on its bristles, or anything outrageous like that, but still. It was bought it in May and left in a corner.

He checked his watch. An hour left to go.

When he returned to the kitchen, he found Blaine with a steaming cup of tea and Perseus glaring daggers at him from the opposite chair, while Elina hummed under her breath tracing swirly patterns across the wooden table.

“Look,” Blaine perked up as soon as Sebastian entered, “your familiar likes me!”

Sebastian had no heart to inform Blaine that this was not his cat’s body language when he liked someone. Or that Perseus was his cat, rather than his familiar. But Elina had probably already talked Blaine’s ears off about how cats could speak to her and – because _everything_ spoke to Elina now and then – Sebastian knew it was a lost battle. He swept up the spilled salt.

“ _Dámelo_ ,” Cristiana ordered and he handed her the dustpan, which she swiftly took away, with the grace of a bomb-disposal expert. Cristiana was the most superstitious one of his siblings. She took things like spilled salt _very_ seriously. She’ll be burning sage all over the place in no time, Sebastian predicted.

Minutes ticked by. Perseus still glared at Blaine, but Elina had slipped soundlessly away to the living room. The clear, soothing fragrance of white sage drifted through the house.

Now that Sebastian was back in his sights, Blaine moved to stand beside him and turned his entire attention to the other’s face. It was unsettling, but somehow not unbearable. At least Blaine wasn’t jumping all over him anymore . . . Perhaps the potion was wearing off? It had been only a drop or two, to be fair. Sebastian couldn’t help but feel proud of how strong a potion he brewed.

He felt Blaine’s eyes glued to his form.

“What?”

“Smug looks handsome on you,” he said, leaning into Sebastian’s space, and for the first time, Sebastian didn’t tense or have the urge to flinch away.

He didn’t know how long they stood there, observing each other in a relatively creepy way, unblinking and barely even breathing, but a song came on from the living room and the eerie spell was abruptly and effectively broken.

“ _Eli_ , _no quiero bailar, te lo dije_ ,” Teresa’s voice was complaining, while her sister probably ignored her completely, the way she usually did. Sebastian could already see them dancing and fooling around together.

“I love this song!” Blaine’s smile was once more almost unbearably bright. It was the record Sebastian had been listening – and cooking – to that morning. “Let’s dance!”

“Wha—uh!”

Before Sebastian could protest, his hand was being pulled on and he was twirled into a loose embrace, meant for dancing.

_Give me a kiss to build a dream on_

_And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss_

The height difference somehow made it easier for Blaine to lead, and Sebastian found himself following.

_Sweetheart, I ask no more than this_

Blaine was humming along and Sebastian found it hard to look away from his face.

_And my imagination will feed my hungry heart_

_Leave me one thing before we part_

The warm and gravelly sound of the familiar trumpet embraced them both, even as they held on to each other, swaying and side-stepping in unusual sync.

_When I'm alone with my fancies, I'll be with you_

_Weaving romances, making believe they're true_

Sebastian knew that the boy he was currently dancing with had been put under a spell but he couldn’t help and feel dazed himself. Did he inhale some leftover mandrake fumes while he was preparing the antidote? Why would looking into a pair of amber eyes suddenly feel so. . .

_Give me your lips for just a moment_

_And my imagination will make that moment live_

. . . Enchanting? Hypnotizing? Why would he suddenly develop an urge to lean closer, until their faces were not even centimetres apart anymore and their lips were just close enough to—

_Oh, give me what you alone can give_

_A kiss to build a dream on_

—of course, Blaine-freaking-under-the-influence-Anderson _actually_ had to dip him at the end, even though Sebastian was considerably taller than him.

“You two are very cute, but if you’re done, I think it’s time to gather that orange peel now,” Cristiana said, pointing to her wrist and completely unfazed by what she’d just walked in on. Sebastian cleared his throat and checked the time himself. Crap, he almost blew it. Frowning, he gripped Blaine’s shoulders and sat him down on the nearest chair.

“You, stay.”

Blaine just beamed at him.

One more ingredient and this insane day will be over, and Roz Washington will take him as his apprentice. Sebastian had no doubt the anti-dote would work. If only he could find that orange peel. . . Where the hell did he put it?

“Cristiana, where did you say you put the orange peel, again?”

“I didn’t. It’s your kitchen, Sebastian.”

Crap. Double crap and triple crap and infinite crap. Suddenly, Sebastian remembered where he put it.

There had been some left and he thought he’d use it all up– why not, an uplifting and centering herb of joy like that, for blessings and good luck and all things beneficial, a herb not unlike bottled sun – who wouldn’t want a little blessing and sunshine in their life? So Sebastian took it.

And he put it into his stupid pumpkin juice.

And now there was none left for the potion he was supposed to finish.

“What’s wrong?” Cristiana asked.

“I don’t have any. I used it up this morning for the pumpkin juice,” Sebastian grit out. “No wonder the stuff was selling.” He looked at his watch. It was half past 11. They had thirty minutes till the deadline and absolutely no orange peel left.

“What?!” Cristiana looked at him like he’d just told her that he was moving to live as a mundane or something equally outrageous. “You used it all for _that_? And you didn’t think to re-stock?”

“Well how could I have known I’d need it again the same night?” Sebastian fumed.

“You couldn’t have, that’s why you always have to be prepar—”

“Oh, _excuse_ me, if I’m not the little _miss perfect witch_ Mom trained _you_ so well to be—”

Blaine’s eyes flew from one to the other like he was watching a tennis match.

“Uh, guys? . . . GUYS!”

The ever increasingly loud argument was interrupted as both Sebastian and Cristiana were stunned into silence when Blaine screamed to capture their attention. Perseus ran away to the other room, passing Elina and Teresa who now gathered in the doorway.

“Why not just use the pumpkin juice?” Blaine offered in a voice considerably subdued now that everyone’s attention was suddenly on him.

Sebastian inhaled with the sole intention to scoff but . . . the suggestion actually made sense.

“I mean, it is the key ingredient. Apart from, well, pumpkin,” Sebastian mulled it over out loud. “But what if—” he cut himself off, pointing at Blaine. “You’re a big fan of pumpkins, right?” Blaine nodded, confused. “It might actually work, then. Okay, yeah. Let’s do it.”

“You’re not _seriously_ going to take advice on potion-brewing from a mundane?” Cristiana gaped.

“I have nothing better,” Sebastian shrugged like it was a done deal, nothing more to be said.

“Blaine the Mundane has a keen eye,” Elina supplied from where she stood with a disgruntled but not unamused Teresa. Blaine blushed.

“Yes but—but—” Cristiana could come up with nothing else as Sebastian grabbed a bottle of his home-made pumpkin juice, plucked the cap open and poured half of its contents straight into the lukewarm pot. They all watched as the potion hissed and puffed and made something like a loud burping noise before it finally settled into a nice looking, smooth mass, reminiscent of liquid chocolate. Only it was the colour of pumpkin. Cristiana scrunched her nose but Sebastian thought it looked good. The colour didn’t matter, in the end, as long as the viscosity was right. 

He checked the time. Five minutes till midnight.

Sebastian broke out Roz Washington’s charmed vial and braced himself.

“Here goes,” he muttered, scooping some brew and filling the vial to the brim. No sooner had he done it, there was a resounding knock on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” Cristiana offered. One moment she was gone and the next they could hear her surprised voice carry across the hallway. “ _Mr. Schue, w-what are you doing here at this hour? Is everything ok? Did something happen?_ ”

Sebastian exchanged a panicked look with his other two sisters. William Schuester, or Mr. Schue, as they called him, was Sebastian’s middle-aged next door neighbour, the one who sold brooms for a living and who gave him the recipe for home-made pumpkin juice. He was also a non-practitioner – a mundane. Which meant this was absolutely not a good time to have him over, not with Roz Washington coming to see the undoing effect of Sebastian’s latest potion.

Furthermore, they now had not one, but _two_ mundanes under his roof and the activities he was engaged in were unquestionably magical ones. Roz Washington might ban him from any kind of apprenticeship just for that! You weren’t supposed to go around revealing magic to non-practitioners. Back at the fair, Sebastian had been seduced by a moment of despair. And look where that got him. Blaine Anderson in his kitchen giving out advice on potions and Mr. Schue visiting at ungodly hours.

Wait, why was he here? No distinct conversation could be heard from the front door and Sebastian nearly went to check on his sister, when the said sister walked back into the kitchen with a solemn look on her face. Behind her walked in Mr. Schue and none other than Roz Washington.

“Good evening, Mr. Smythe,” she greeted in a majestic voice. “I see you’ve gathered an audience.”

She then turned to Blaine who looked at her in awe.

“And here’s our little experiment,” she said sweetly.

Sebastian frowned. He didn’t think of Blaine as an experiment. He said so out loud and while Roz Washington just raised her eyebrows, Mr. Schue positively beamed, like Sebastian uttered the perfect answer to a very difficult question.

“Atta boy. Well, let’s see what you came up with,” he said.

“Wait, what? How are you—you’re not a mundane? You’re a practitioner?” Sebastian could hardly believe it.

“Of course I am!” Mr. Schue scoffed. “And I happen to think you have talent, boy. I’ve seen what you can do with original recipes. Why do you think I offered you that one? I knew you were bound to make it into something clever! And besides, who do you think recommended you to Roz here?”

“If you hadn’t, you would have been a very disappointing partner, indeed,” Roz Washington confirmed, and that’s when it clicked. Mr. Schue or William Schuester was one of two partners of—

“—Washington and _William_?” Sebastian breathed. “I always thought ‘William’ was a surname.”

“Eh,” Mr. Schue shrugged. “We agreed it sounded better than ‘Schuester and Washington’.”

“William likes to scout by immersing himself into the community. I prefer to just pass by,” Roz Washington said. “Enough pleasantries. Let’s do what we came here for.”

Suddenly all eyes turned to Blaine and Blaine fixed his questioning gaze in Sebastian.

“W-why is everyone staring at me?”

Sebastian gripped the vial a little harder. He didn’t want to do it this way. They just barged in on them, not even allowing him to ease Blaine into the idea that he would have to drink this stuff and then magically wake up from a spell.

“Blaine,” he tried to make his voice as soothing as possible. “You like me, right?” Blaine smiled and nodded enthusiastically, and it broke Sebastian’s heart just a little to be taking advantage of him like that. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Okay. I’ll do anything you want.” He said it so calmly it left Sebastian a little shocked.

“I need you to have a sip of this,” Sebastian lifted the vial in his hand. “It’s nothing horrible, just like pumpkin juice, really.” Sebastian had no idea if it tasted wonderful or horrible, and hated himself for the lie.

“It’s to wipe my memory, isn’t it?”

“That’s righ—Wait, what? No,” Sebastian frowned at the suggestion. “Why would you think that?”

“I witnessed magic,” Blaine shrugged like mind-wiping was a given.

“O-okay, but this isn’t to wipe your memory. It’s to make you feel like yourself again.”

“But I’m going to forget you.” 

Sebastian choked on whatever answer he had been planning to give. He suddenly didn’t want anyone to witness this little ‘experiment’, as W&W had christened it.

“Will you kiss me?” Blaine asked. “If I drink that, will you kiss me?”

He could hear Teresa gasp an incredulous laugh. Sebastian glanced at Mistress Washington who made a non-committal gesture with her hand. Kiss away, it said. His eyes returned to Blaine’s wistful ones and he nodded. If Blaine wanted one last kiss before he returned to his right mind, who was Sebastian to deny it?

“Sure, I’ll kiss you.”

That was all it took. Unexpectedly, Blaine reached out and plucked the small vial from Sebastian’s hand, tipping its contents into his mouth without further ado. Everyone waited with baited breath but nothing in particular happened. Blaine’s gaze landed on Sebastian and his amber eyes flashed with a brief orange glow. Then—nothing.

“Where am I?” Blaine looked around. “Did I hit my head?” his hand gripped the front of his head as if feeling for injuries.

“Does it hurt?” Sebastian was the one to ask, genuinely worried.

“Not really, just feels funny. Fuzzy,” Blaine sighed.

“What do you remember?” Cristiana was next to ask.

“Cooper. . . Coffee. We were having coffee at the fair, and then. . .” he trailed off, trying to figure it out. “We came. . .here?” He sounded so unsure Sebastian wanted nothing else than to wrap him up in his arms and erase these stupid doubts. And where the hell did that come from, all of a sudden?

“Well, Mr. Smythe. It seems everything is again in perfect order.” Roz Washington sounded pleased. Mr. Schue nodded with another genuine smile. They were already leaving. “I’ll be seeing you in a month. And oh,” she paused on her way out. “The solution was quite clever, but next time, _do_ at least try to not over-do things so much. _And I thought Hummel was pushing it,_ ” he heard her add to Mr. Schue whose eyes just crinkled in mirth and then they were gone.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” Teresa commented dryly. “Who’s taking the little hobbit home?”

“Blaine’s not a hobbit, he’s a mundane with special eyes.”

“Whatever, Elina. Get dressed.” Teresa gathered her cards and pulled on her coat. “We’re leaving now, so I’m just saying.”

“It’s fine,” Sebastian replied. “I’ll take care of Blaine.”

Blaine, who was oddly and deliberately quiet.

“Are you going to be ok?” Cristiana asked, lingering in the doorway. Sebastian nodded. She looked at him for a couple of long seconds and then turned to leave. “Bye, Blaine,” she called, surprising him, before the front door closed on them.

They were left in deafening silence. Sebastian knew he had to be the one to break it. He just didn’t know where to start. This was not the same Blaine Anderson as fifteen minutes ago. That Blaine was already dead and buried deep into the subconscious.

“I-uh could take you home? I know it’s late, I’m sorry about—”

“Or you could kiss me.”

“What?” Sebastian was stunned and he would forever deny that Blaine’s unexpected words made him squeak. The memory of that silly promise was bitter-sweet.

“I recall you promised to kiss me if I drank whatever you concocted in that fishy pot of yours.” Sebastian had the wits to grace him only with a dumb, and hardly attractive, open-mouthed stare. “Well, I did that. So. Are you going to kiss me now?”

Sebastian was completely baffled. If Blaine could remember that, then, it meant. . . Sweet Morgan. The anti-dote hadn’t worked. But how? How was that possible? Sebastian saw Blaine’s eyes glow the same way they had the first time around. The spell shouldn’t last.

“Are you in your right mind right now?” Sebastian asked, intelligently. What a thing to ask someone who’d asked for a kiss you’d already promised them.

Unexpectedly, Blaine smiled.

“Don’t worry, I’m not crazy obsessed with you anymore.”

“But—how—so, let me get this straight. You _do_ remember, everything? Why would you claim that you didn’t?”

“Didn’t want to get you into trouble,” Blaine shrugged. “This seemed really important to you. Your sister explained earlier, when she helped me change.”

What the hell, he didn’t mean _Teresa_ , did he?

“And I told you the truth, it’s all fuzzy.” Blaine seemed to remember something else. “Oh, and sorry, about—in the bathroom. I’m really not like that,” he seemed genuinely embarrassed. But then he added: “At least not on the first encounter.”

It was Sebastian’s turn to blush and he felt something warm spread inside his chest. Blaine was looking at him, expectantly.

“So, if I kiss you—”

“—when, you mean _when_ ,” Blaine interrupted. “You did promise.”

“Right. _When_ I kiss you—” he paused, not sure how to ask this, “do I absolutely _have_ to take you home?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Or you could stay? It really is late.” _And there’s nothing to hide here, anymore_ , was the unspoken rest on Sebastian’s mind. Blaine pursed his lips.

“I guess that would probably be the least unexpected development of the day.”

“I agree,” Sebastian said, leaning forward. Their lips were almost touching when Blaine spoke again.

“And you could always sic your familiar on me and wipe my memory in the morning.”

“Oh, shut up, Blaine the Mundane.”

Sebastian finally connected their lips, wiping all traces of Blaine Anderson’s playful smugness with his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my Morgan, WHY IS THIS FINAL CHAPTER SO LONG???????????????? 
> 
> Anyway, that's all folks. It took a while, life is busy right now - but I made it. 
> 
> I'm sorry if this piece turned out lousier than you expected it to be. All comments are welcome! 
> 
> In case it escaped your notice, our lovely trinity is made up of Quinn, Britt and Tana - for all intents and purposes of this story named Cristiana, Elina and Teresa. Yes, I'm aware of the double meaning of 'fooling around' and I love Brittana but honestly, here they are just sisters and that's all they'll ever be in this 'verse. No incestuous tendencies of any kind, not even in the back of my mind. 
> 
> That being said, I salute you all! Cheers :)

**Author's Note:**

> *This is a multi-chapter story, not going to be too long, I just haven't had the time to edit everything.  
> In case you were wondering, 'Teresa' is based on Santana Lopez. The other sisters should make an appearance, too.


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